It was almost thirty years ago that I got to know about the existence of Guarino Guarini’s massive philosophical treatise Placita philosophica. In those days, I was intensely involved in a project about the philosophical foundations of Renaissance architectural theory, so the very fact that one of the most prominent Baroque-era architects was active as a philosopher could not have failed to arouse my curiosity. Getting access to a copy of the Placita in those days, however, was not easy: during my I Tatti fellowship in 2000–2001, I spent some time searching, without success, for a copy of the book in North Italian libraries, and it was only some years later that I managed to obtain a PDF version of the book from the Bavarian State Library. Obtaining a copy of a book and being able to read it with competency are, however, two different things. The Placita is not an easy philosophical text, Guarini’s Latin style is not the easiest to read, and it took me a number of other projects, both in philosophy and architectural history, before I acquired the competencies necessary to engage with it. It was only in 2019 that I properly read Guarini’s philosophical treatise for the first time. The current monograph is thus a result of a project on which I started working during my sabbatical at the University of Pennsylvania in 2019–2020. Some sections of the book were originally published in I Tatti Studies and the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians or were presented at the conferences Mind-Set and Early Modern Architecture (Aquila, 2021), Guarino Guarini e Modena a quattrocento anni di nascita (Modena 2024), and as a comprehensive lecture series at the Politecnico di Torino in March 2024.1
A half-a-decade project like this one acquires many debts. I extend my special thanks to my hosts at the University of Pennsylvania, Gary Hatfield and Ian Verstegen; to Edoardo Piccoli, Susan Klaiber, Christopher Martin, Elwin Robison, Stefano Piazza, Gaia Nuccio, and Anthony Gerbino for their important advice at various stages of the project; to Astrid Sandvik for her help and patience with my unusual library requests; to Andrew Saunders for the permission to use his drawing of the church of San Lorenzo as the front page illustration, to my doctoral students Øystein Holdø and Simen Taraldsen for insightful conversations and discussions, as well as for their help with the preparation of illustrations for this book and to Lucy Stevens for her editorial help with the preparation of the manuscript.
Mitrović, “Guarino Guarini’s Architectural Theory” and idem, “Guarino Guarini and the Understanding of Space and Place.”